Faith Sedlin and Brandon Fayette discuss how their company’s ProVis tools let actors and crew see digital assets with their own eyes, in real-time, blending live-action and CGI in-camera on the new season of Seth MacFarlane’s hit comedy.
One of a director’s many, many responsibilities is to try to convey to actors and film crew what a scene’s visual effects will look like in post-production. But now, instead of needing actors to imagine that the person next to them in a green suit holding a pole with a tennis ball is actually a teddy bear, Fuzzy Door Tech came up with different idea.
Thanks to the company’s ViewScreen’s real-time production visualization (ProVis) tools, actors, directors and other live-action production crew members don’t have to imagine VFX before post-production. They can see digital assets as small as a mouse or as large as an entire airplane hangar with their own eyes and, in real-time, evaluate blocking, camera movement, and comedic timing for immediate creative feedback.
“It saves everyone so much time on set,” says Faith Sedlin, president of Fuzzy Door Tech, the technology division of Seth MacFarlane’s production company Fuzzy Door, established in 2019. “You can build digital environments and effects right on set and see how the shot will look and make corrections before anything goes to post. It saves time for the actors, the director and certainly for the editorial team. And it can be shared on multiple devices from anywhere, so it takes out the need for reshoots and telephone tag with directors.”
These augmented reality tools are also especially helpful for directors who serve as actors themselves. ViewScreen has been an invaluable tool on the production of Ted, MacFarlane’s raucous comedy that recently returned to Peacock for Season 2. In the new season of the live-action / CGI hybrid series, set prior to the events in the Ted films, it’s 1994, and senior year of high school is underway for Ted the foul-mouthed teddy bear and his best friend, likable but awkward John Bennett. Of course, as always, Ted may be a lousy influence on John, but at the end of the day, he’s a loyal pal who’s always willing to go out on a limb for friendship. Or something like that.
Check out the trailer:
MacFarlane not only serves as director on the series but also the voice of Ted. Being able to share with actors a real-time animated Ted, whose movements in the scene MacFarlane could control himself during shooting, simplified his double duties. And it gave MacFarlane and the other actors the freedom to improvise new ideas and movements in a scene without having to add extra time to production. And in the television industry, saving time is everything.
“Before, the scene would have needed to be so specifically storyboarded and shot and, if the director wanted to do something differently or felt the scene wasn’t working and had to place the animation or VFX somewhere else, we’d either need to reshoot or do so much more work in post to make sure the actor was still interacting with the animation in a believable way,” explains Brandon Fayette, co-founder of Fuzzy Door Tech and chief product officer. “Before there’s even a single nail put into a single piece of wood, we can walk an entire set as if we're there through ViewScreen. We can just hit the ground running and see right away what fits, what’s too small, and how to get the best and funniest shot. And we built the system to work so fast that it feels as natural as picking up your iPhone and making a video.”
The company’s ProVis app system – ViewScreen Scout and ViewScreen Scout Pro, both of which run on iPhones and iPads, as well as ViewScreen Studio, which runs on a combination of iPhones/iPads and Mac/WIN computers – builds on the successful first season of Ted. It marked the first television production to film an animated lead character in real-time alongside live actors. Season 2 extended these capabilities to more complex sequences, combining live actors, digital environments, and effects in real-time. The technology was used extensively in a Dungeons and Dragons-inspired episode to support the visualization and animation of collapsing ceilings and expansive forests in “Dungeons & Dealers,” Episode 3.
The episode, based on the popular fantasy role-play game, required actors to perform within a temple environment enhanced by digital effects that showed a descending ceiling with spikes threatening to crush them. While parts of the set were built physically, the dangerous elements were created digitally and visualized live on set using ViewScreen.
“We had a scene like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where they go into a room and trigger a trap and spikes are coming down from the ceiling to kill them,” says Fayette. “They essentially have to solve a puzzle, and if they don't, they're going to get impaled by the spikes. We used ViewScreen on an iPad while the set was being built to figure out how the spikes were going to move, how they’d be spread out, the timing of their movement, and things like that. We built a game controller hookup where you could trigger these digital spikes coming from the ceiling and then trigger their speed on the ViewScreen. If the actors flubbed a line, we could stop it. We could rewind and fast forward the prop as if it was like a live physical asset and make changes on the fly.”
Fayette adds, “In that same episode, we also had these women who were dressed as statues and giving riddles. We didn’t know where anyone was going to stand yet, so we used the ViewScreen tech to figure out where to place them on the set and where we’d block the action before getting the actors into all the crazy makeup. It eliminated guesswork and filming went much more smoothly.”
Fayette and Sedlin say the process of filming a live-action and VFX-hybrid show is “like conducting an orchestra or coordinating a ballet.” It’s all about timing, communication and collaboration, making sure that everybody knows what they're supposed to do.
“Being able to see and control all those details the day of shooting is so powerful,” says Sedlin. “We’re not pushing problems down the line into post that would mess with the budget or cause delays. We've had as many as 40 iPhones in the system, all acting as control pads and directing any part of the system. It’s a whole new kind of collaboration.”
And a whole new way to pull authentic emotion out of actors.
“Seth isn’t acting separate from the other actors anymore,” says Fayette. “He’s a digital character the actors can see through the ViewScreen and is like a puppet on set with them, performing just like another actor. He can improv and make decisions on the fly. So, the connections hit harder.”
He continues, “The original idea for this series was that Seth was going to wear the mocap suit while he was directing, just like he did on the films. About a few weeks into production, he realized it was just too much to juggle because of the timelines being so tight on television. So, the whole show had taken a hiatus to try to figure out how they were going to plan shots moving forward. During that time, we created a system that allowed us to not only create a digital Ted on set the actors could see, but also let another team member puppet Ted as Seth is looking at his notes, directing, and voice acting. We use markerless motion capture but have the ability to override Ted's eyeline and puppet the head to have him act to the actors.”
This way, the emotion is more present during shooting, as is the comedy.
“There's a scene where Ted is having an affair with a Mrs. Robinson-type character, and he walks out wearing a purple sexual apparatus,” says Fayette. “And that call and response scene where he's talking with the character, John really hit, because we could see the digital apparatus and see how that scene played out.”
The technology has also opened up the possibilities for future productions and, according to Fayette and Sedlin, “the gears are turning.”
“Our crew had a lot of fun with this tech and there were lots of ideas coming out of this season. Unfortunately, I can't talk about much else, but we’re always getting new questions about what we can do and people are thinking of new ways on different shows of how we can use ViewScreen.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
